Fear in the air

Twenty years ago, five gunmen seized an Indian Airlines flight and forced it to land at Kandahar, keeping India on its toes for a week. THE WEEK speaks to some of the hostages and negotiators to reconstruct the subcontinent’s longest hijack drama

- Mandira Nayar

DECEMBER 24, 1999; 4:12PM IST

Indian Airlines Flight 814, flying from Kathmandu to Delhi, was passing over Lucknow. Flight purser Anil Sharma finished serving tea to Captain Devi Sharan and copilot Rajinder Kumar and came out of the cockpit. Instantly, he ran into a stocky man in a grey suit and a red monkey cap. The man pointed a copper-coloured pistol at Sharma’s chest; his other hand held a grenade.

“Don’t move,” said the man. “I have pulled the grenade’s pin. If you do anything, we will blow up the plane.”

Before Sharma could warn the pilots, the man entered the cockpit and told them to fly to Lahore. Sharan said he did not have enough fuel to do so. The man, referred to by the other four hijackers as ‘Chief’, replied: “Then we will blow the plane up.”

VARANASI ATC, 4:57PM

It was an ordinary day at the air traffic control in Varanasi. On duty were controller Sampat Kumar and watch supervisor Y.K. Rohilla. At 4:57pm, IC 814 informed them of the hijack.

The ATC alerted Delhi. Inspector Yadav, who happened to be in the room, dialled a senior official in South Block and broke the news.

THE PLOT

The hijack had a single aim—free the most prominent terrorist in the subcontinent, Maulana Masood Azhar.

Masood had been in jail in India for more than four years. Attempts to break him out of prison had failed several times; once, he got stuck in a tunnel because of his girth. “You will not be able to keep me in custody for long,” he had told an investigator.

Masood turned out to be right. It was to free him that terrorists hijacked the plane carrying 155 passengers on the eve of the last Christmas of the last millennium.